


Simply Stricken

by Jade_Masquerade



Category: The Last Kingdom (TV), The Warrior Chronicles | The Saxon Stories - Bernard Cornwell
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, TLKFFF2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25541116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Masquerade/pseuds/Jade_Masquerade
Summary: Sigtryggr was an odd sort of Dane, Stiorra had to admit. After she told him in a moment of weakness how she felt safer with him here, he’d spent as much time in here with her and the books and table games as outside training with swords and shields. Sometimes he would bring an object from somewhere in the castle to talk about, or something to occupy himself, and he would sit and listen to what she had to say, and he entertained all sorts of her questions in turn.And she wasn’t blind either, regardless of what Brida threatened, so it hadn’t escaped her attention that Sigtryggr was rather handsome, too…
Relationships: Sigtryggr Ivarsson/Stiorra
Comments: 10
Kudos: 65
Collections: The Last Kingdom Fanfic Fest





	Simply Stricken

**Author's Note:**

> Written for TLK FanficFest 2020 Round 2 prompt "Stiorra/Sigtryggr and their first kiss"

Stiorra sighed, the book in front of her no longer holding her attention. There were only so many dusty old tomes full of endless burh descriptions and donations made to the church and counts of barley yields she could read, and she glanced away from the words that had long since begun to blur together. 

Instead, her eyes wandered to the most interesting part of this dull, drab room: Sigtryggr himself. 

After Eardwulf had barged through those doors and she’d spent days listening to Brida demanding her head and all sorts of her body parts in turn, Stiorra had admitted in a moment of weakness that she felt safer with him here, and he’d spent as much time in here with her and the books and table games as outside training with swords and shields ever since. 

She knew she should have hated him. She knew that she should have been angry and afraid. She knew he was dangerous, that he had killed. _But so have Father and his men,_ whispered that conspiratorial voice she fought often these days. Maybe it was her mother’s strength or her father’s impetuousness, but Stiorra found she couldn’t muster a semblance of fear or ire anymore, at least not when they were here alone like this. 

Once she’d been certain he hadn’t intended to harm her, she had asked if she was free to go. He insisted she was if she wished, her chambers evidently not well guarded if Eardwulf deep in his cups had managed to stagger served as proof enough of that. In that moment, though, she’d realized the entire city was full of men like that waiting beyond these walls, with nothing better to occupy their time than drinking and whoring and fighting in the streets. Besides, it was far better here than out there where she imagined Brida sat contemplating a thousand ways for her to die, and if she waited here, Stiorra knew somewhere deep down that her father would come for her. And until then, the stories Sigtryggr told were far more fascinating than listening to children whining or watching Finan and Sihtric playing dice for the thousandth time.

Sigtryggr was an odd sort of Dane, Stiorra had to admit. He strangely seemed to have taken as much of an interest in scrolls and her stories as the sprawling palace and the chests of silver they had gathered from Winchester’s stores. Sometimes he would bring an object—a relic from the chapel, a platter with a verse inscribed upon it, a painting of a saint—from somewhere in the castle, or something to occupy himself, polishing his boots or scabbard, weaving together a hempen rope, the kind of work she’d expect a handmaiden to do, not a warlord, and he would sit and listen to what she had to say, whether it was telling him about the beliefs of the Christian faith, talking about her childhood, or teasing him about if Winchester had turned out to be all he dreamed. He entertained all sorts of her questions in turn, about his homeland and Irland and the sea and all he’d seen along the way, and she couldn’t help but be drawn into his tales of the world beyond the walls of Saltwic and Coccham. 

And she wasn’t blind either, regardless of what Brida threatened. It hadn’t escaped her attention that Sigtryggr was rather handsome, with his long hair and his armbands, clad in functional leather rather than a cape embroidered with gold or jewelry that served to do little other than belie exorbitant wealth. He looked so different from the shorn haired Saxons she’d been raised alongside, and perhaps most importantly, also unlike them he clearly washed. 

“Are you overcome with admiration?” 

She shook her head when she realized she must have been staring. “No. I’m _bored._ ” 

He smirked. Then there was that, too, those smiles that would have surely bewitched her in an instant had she been a weaker woman. “So I’ve heard.” 

She rolled her eyes. “My father’s stories made all of this seem exciting. And all that’s here is a list of dead men and their vassals and their lands and _who cares._ ” 

“Lady Aelswith has assured me that her husband was a great man,” Sigtryggr said. 

“Oh, have you been spending a great deal of time with Lady Aelswith now?” She took her turn to smirk now, and then offered mercy at the look of bewilderment he wore. “He was, I suppose. He ruled with fairness and strength and love for his people.”

“But?” 

She could not deny he was coming to know her well. “But it wasn’t as if he did these things all himself. He didn’t fight the battles, he didn’t bring in the harvests, he didn’t build the burhs. There’s scarcely even a mention of Lady Aelswith, either.”

“Would there be? She tells me Wessex has no such thing as a queen. Aelflaed tells me different, of course.” 

“Does it matter? Being a queen seems utterly boring, too.”

The corners of his mouth quirked up. “Don’t all girls wish to grow up and become queen?” 

“No,” she shuddered. “I certainly didn’t. It seems awful, to do nothing but spend your days bowing and curtsying locked up in some palace. And I don’t want children, much less a kingdom.” 

“Oh? Have you discussed this with your intended?” 

She wrinkled her nose. “My intended?” 

“The man to whom you are betrothed. That’s what Saxons like to do, is it not? Find someone who can make them richer, give them power, or grant them lands, and marry their daughters off to them in exchange for their favor.” 

“Yes,” she admitted. It all sounded rather crude when he put it that way, and she supposed it was. Her mother had told her once of the man she’d nearly been forced to marry, her father’s cruel uncle who had stolen Bebbanberg, and how her brother, Guthred, arranged the match to solidify an alliance and receive reinforcements of men with no regard for his sister’s well-being or her wishes, and how her father had returned in time to disrupt the completion of the ceremony. Knowing her father, Stiorra suspected she left out some of the gorier details to make it fit for the ears of a child, but the passion of the act had always stuck with her, the reminder of the fierce devotion and the love they shared, and how so few were ever permitted to follow their hearts as they had. “Sometimes.”

“So your betrothed…?” Sigtryggr prompted. 

They had spoken at length about family, hers and his alike, but this was the first time their conversation has strayed into this territory. “I don’t have one,” she said. “There’s no husband waiting for me. I’m not sure I even wish to marry, either.” 

“Ah, so you have preferred to take lovers instead, Stiorra Uhtredsdottir,” he said, winking. 

She felt her face flame. “No, I never even so much as… I’ve never taken a lover.”

Stiorra expected him to laugh, for him to look at her as a child just like everyone else, maybe to tease about her evident prudishness as she’d seen her father’s men rib each other often enough. But he only nodded, though he must have read her embarrassment, for he asked, “Are all Saxons so shy about these matters, too?” 

“I’m not a Saxon,” she said for what must have been the thousandth time, but this time she said it with a smile. 

“Then your Danish mother did not tell you of the joys that can be found with another?” 

“My mother died when I was still too young to talk of such things,” she said. “And the nuns and priests in Saltwic only droned on about purity and maintaining virtue… which makes Lady Aethelflaed herself quite the deviant if half of what they say about her and my father is true.” 

She grinned, though such a secret was scarcely one anymore, not for anyone who had seem them together with their own two eyes, and she flushed at the memory of how she had stumbled upon them kissing one time when she had come to bid him a farewell on his visit to Saltwic. Stiorra turned and ran before they noticed her interruption, and while it had been a bit awkward, she owed much to Lady Aethelflaed’s kindness and wished only happiness for her. 

“Lord Uhtred and Lady Aethelflaed? The daughter of King Alfred and Lady Aelswith?” Sigtryggr seemed amused at the prospect. 

Stiorra nodded. “My father loved her, and she him. But they say before, she loved a Dane once. That he truly fathered her daughter, not Lord Aethelred.” 

She had never been bold enough to ask Lady Aethelflaed of it, but hearing of the tale had always excited her, and retelling it now was no different. She couldn’t help but think it romantic, despite its beginning and end and the loss of what could have been. 

“A smart woman, then,” Sigtryggr said. “Except if she loved your father, then why do they whisper he waits outside these walls when he could be the ruling Lord of Mercia?” 

“Lady Aethelflaed promised to remain chaste to placate the ealdormen and their god too, I suppose.” 

He furrowed his brow in confusion. “Their god truly wants piety and obedience rather than free will and happiness?” 

“I don’t know what their god wants,” she shook her head. “For me to devote my life to a nunnery? Or am I instead to save myself for some repulsive old man and his bags of gold? Or some cruel lord with the right name and advantageous lands?” 

“You do not believe in their god?” 

She’d long ago lost faith in the god the Christians worshipped, the one King Alfred had tried to impress upon her to punish her father, but she’d also lost count of how many times she’d asked him, pleaded with the gods of her ancestors, begged anyone who was listening to free her from the boredom of first Coccham and then Saltwic, for someone to come along, anyone, and take her somewhere else, anywhere else, back to Winchester or Northumbria, and bring her adventure. Sometimes the gods had a funny way of showing their will. 

“I don’t want to believe in the existence of a god who takes that much interest in my cunt,” she said bluntly. 

He laughed, and soon she found herself laughing along with him. 

“It’s true,” she insisted. “I don’t care what they say about pagans, if we’re barbaric and wicked. At least our gods are not petty and selfish.” 

“Our gods don’t care so much what we do so long as we entertain them,” he said. 

“Then they also must be rather bored with this siege,” she said, though she felt anything but now with the way she felt the air shift between them. 

Sigtryggr stood up and walked towards her slowly, nearing where she sat upon the table, books discarded at her side that couldn’t hold a candle compared to the way he seemed to study her now. “Then perhaps we should take it upon ourselves to amuse them?” 

She was struck by how he was even more handsome this way, stunning, strikingly. He was utterly compelling this close, tall, imposing with his scar streaking past his eye, and strong, her gaze following the muscles from his shoulders down to his forearms. At this distance, he was only himself, not a warlord, not more god than man as some of the others seemed to tell it. 

He hadn’t touched her since he’d taken the broken glass from her hand and talked her down from using it to mar her face, but she still remembered the way his skin felt against hers, warm and rough. He was even more hesitant this time as he reached first for her hand, and when she let her fingers thread through his, he brought the other up to stroke her cheek. 

It was nothing, really, no more than what perhaps a hundred other men had done to her, claiming they wished to admire her beauty or looking for a shadow of her father in her face or attempting to evoke a memory of her mother, yet the simple touch sent heat flooding through her. 

Stiorra wondered what he would do if she was bold enough to do the same to him, and gathering her courage, she decided to find out. She began with tracing over his scar, her fingertip lightly following the curved line, skirting around the edge of his mouth, skimming along his jaw, and then continuing over the hair that brushed his shoulders until her fingers slid against the leather covering his chest and curled around the hammer of Thor he wore. 

She found herself drawn to funny things this close: his eyelashes, the bob of his throat, the wisps of a beard gracing his chin, and when she had looked her fill, she brought her eyes up to meet his. She felt as though he saw _her_ —not Lord Uhtred’s daughter, whether that was for good or for bad, not a captive or an enemy, and certainly not a child. 

“May I…” 

“Yes.” She didn’t entirely know what she was agreeing to, nor did she care; she only knew that she wanted, anticipation thrumming beneath her skin. 

The touch of his lips to hers was softer even than the feel of his hand on her cheek. It was strange at first, all of this, the way it felt, how he moved firm but gentle, slow and deliberate, even the fact that they stood in a room where King Alfred’s scribes had written of her father’s victories and the conquests of the Saxons. 

It was _nice,_ though, even as she wondered how she’d know, given she had nothing with which to compare it. She felt as though she was fumbling through the motions at first, merely attempting to mirror what he did, but then it smoothed into something even more pleasant, something synchronous as they found a sort of rhythm, and she paused only when she was certain she needed to breathe. 

This time she initiated as they resumed, one of her hands winding around his wrist, the other still entwined with his coming up to rest on his chest between them. Their kisses grew quicker, deeper, more desperate until he slowed the pace again. 

He lingered there against her, and seconds or minutes or hours could have passed, but Stiorra still was not expecting it when he pulled away, and it was so sudden she didn’t even have a chance to mask her disappointment. 

Perhaps he’d stopped for an entirely different reason, though, and before she could stifle them, the words escaped. “Was I awful?” 

He grinned at her, his eyes darkened, and when he spoke again, his voice was deep, a low rumble in his chest, and it made her want _more._ “No. I simply find myself stricken.” 

Stiorra nodded in understanding, her breath catching as his free hand slipped from her cheek to her hip. It had been just a kiss, but it didn’t feel like _just_ anything as Stiorra reached up and swiped her finger over where his lips had touched hers. It felt like it could be something, could be everything. 

All her life Stiorra had been told of how she resembled her mother—in her looks, her strength, her wit—and she’d been told, too, of the gift of prophecy she’d possessed, of how Gisela could cast her rune sticks and see fate in the way they fell. That had always seemed like a strange business to Stiorra, but in that moment she wondered if she had inherited something else from her mother after all because as she looked back up at Sigtryggr again and returned his soft smile, she suspected she could see a glimpse of hers.


End file.
